The trend among domestic beverage manufacturers in recent years has been to dispense pre-packaged potable beverages by can in preference to bottles. At least in the 8 oz. to 12 oz. serving size, cans have come to largely dominate the pre-package beverage market as compared to bottles.
While cans for beverages such as soft drinks and beer have many market virtues, they have the disadvantge of not being resealable once opened. That is, the opening of the can for consumption of the beverage content usually entails removing a tab of sorts that until removed represents a permanent portion of the can body defining the leakproof canned enclosure. Because of the inability to reseal the can of an otherwise unconsumed or incompletely consumed content, it has become common to utilize snap-on caps or lids of sorts in order to close off the can opening until the beverage consumption is to be initiated or resumed. By means of such lids, most inadvertent spillage is avoided while at the same time foreign matter is prevented from entering the can when the can is left opened and exposed. To enable intermittent consumption, at least some of such lids in the prior art provide for a resealable pour opening in the body of the lid which can be opened or capped as required. Exemplifying lids and/or similarly intended devices of the prior art are the disclosures of U.S. Pat. No. 3,994,411; 4,215,793; 4,244,488; and 4,518,094.
While such prior art constructions would appear to function satisfactorily for their intended purposes, they generally are uncomfortable to drink from directly other than by straw and are generally unable to contain spillage occurring in the space intervening between the lid and the can top. In many instances, the lid covered can is hand held during which can tippage can or does occur particularly when being held during the course of travel such as by car or boat in which the occupants are subjected to varying degrees of travel motion. Moreover, such lids are constructed so as to fit only a single can size requiring a correspondence of different lid sizes and a matched fitting for each can size. In common use today are cans of about 2 7/16 and 2 9/16 inches in diameter typically utilized for both beer and soft drinks.